Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition to Whatever Happened To... , where we look at gaming’s biggest flops, failures, and flub ups. And today, we’re all bitches! According to gaming’s biggest burnout, John Romero. And anyone who knows about worst games ever, knows exactly what we’re gonna be talking about. The N64 hype disaster, 2000s Daikatana.



Daikatana is an infamous game, for many reasons, and follows the story of feudal Japan in the future, rival clans, and the evil sword that is way lamer than Soul Edge, Daikatana. Before we talk about what a steaming pile of cow shit that Daikatana is, we need to go about the games development. And before we can talk about it’s development, we need to talk about video games favorite punching bag, John Romero. One of the four original creators of the classic games, like Wolfenstein and Doom, which were violent and insane first person shooters that revolutionized the genre. After getting famous for his creation for of Doom, as well as other games like Quake, John Romero wanted to work on a new game, one that was completely different. Let’s head back to the year of 1997, the year that totally ripped off Hong Kong ‘97. A classic. On April of 1997, John Romero got together a team of seven amatuer artists into the Ion Software studio and wanted to work on this game, using the same engine as Quake. Since Quake had eight people working on it, and was finished within six months, John Romero believed that he could have the game finished in time for Christmas of that same year. But, when Daikatana was showed off at E3 of that same year, he noticed that the game had started to have an outdated look to it, due to the engine. John compared the original Quake engine to the more advanced Quake II engine. John Romero decided that the game needed to be more technologically advanced, and so, started to rework Daikatana into the Quake II engine and pushed the deadline to March of 1998.
1998 rolled around, and around this time, while Dreamworks and Pixar were busy killing each other over Antz and A Bug’s Life, John Romero was able to get press coverage and some advertising for Daikatana. Time Magazine told readers that, and I quote, “Everything that game designer John Romero touches turns to gore and gold.” Another marketer had an entire page that was nothing but a red background, and on it, in black letters, were, “John Romero is about to make you his bitch.” And just underneath that, for added flavor, was, “Suck it down”. This kind of publicity was never seen before in any game advertising. People knew that John Romero was a little less family friendly when it came to talking about games and such, but he didn’t even hesitate to say this kind of thing on paper. Granted, John Romero didn’t say any of this, it was actually the marketer who created it, Mike Wilson, and John Romero reluctantly agreed to print it. Game journalists were treating John Romero like a god. Granted, when you revolutionize the entire first person shooting genre, that’s a given, but they would accept anything that John Romero did… But that foreshadowing will have to wait. Let’s continue with the development. All of this sort of publicity was sadly going to John Romero’s head, and it wouldn’t be long until news of what was going on behind the scenes of the development of Daikatana that some people started to get a little worried. John Romero started to feel like a rock star. He wanted an expensive office in Dallas, Texas, raced fast cars, and paid for only the best kinds of luxuries. This kind of behavior caused the original team working on Daikatana to quit the project and form their own company, Gathering of Developers, a company that made nothing of note and was defunct in 2004. Not only were there issues with the creative team on this game, but the game itself. Because so much work had gone into Daikatana using the original engine, switching over to the new Quake II engine would result in losing almost a years worth of progress.
Finally, 1999 came around. The start of a new millennium was upon us. Daikatana was still in the works, with Ion Software saying that, and I quote, “Come hell or high water, the game will be done on February 15th, 1999”.... It didn’t get done on February 15th, 1999. Only a demo was released on March of that year, a demo with no monsters or even a look into the single player campaign, and was only multiplayer deathmatches. With each new bit of news of the game coming out, more and more people began to get skeptical and hype was slowly dying down the more it looked like this game would fail. The team tried to create a new demo for E3 for that year, but they somehow made it even worse, with a terrible framerate that only ran at 12 frames per second and was not fun to play. This pushed Ion Software into a downward spiral that they would have to try real hard to pull themselves out of… They didn’t. Eidos, after having pumped over $44 million dollars into Ion Software, had just about enough of this bullshit. Ion Software agreed to let Eidos take over the company and the two founders of Ion Software, Todd Porter and Jerry O’Flaherty, left the company. And in April 21, 2000, Daikatana was finally released to the world… And it was fucking terrible!
Here it is, ladies and gentleman. This is what all that hype built up to. A buggy mess of a game where you can die out of nowhere, filled with endless backtracking just so you can barely get to the next level and some of the worst AI in gaming at the time. Fans of John Romero and gaming critics despised this game. It was seen as a disappointment and, even more so, people consider Daikatana to be one of the worst video games ever made. Yes, right up there with Bubsy 3D and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. It was that hated. And I don’t blame them, this game sucks! And in the end, John Romero never saw any of this coming. Because all stars eventually burn out. John Romero was so ashamed of what happened, believing that the whole “John Romero’s gonna make you his bitch” ad hurt his reputation in the gaming industry. Of course, that isn’t true. I mean, the ad sure as hell didn’t help his case, but it was a combination of the advertisements, the behind the scenes drama, and the amount of delays, promising a game that turned out to be a huge piece of shit. The game was so bad, along with all the drama and poor management, this game actual caused some journalists and fans to declare that they will never want anything to do with John Romero ever again. All that work of building a reputation and becoming a respectful member of the gaming industry, all straight down the pisser thanks to one shitty game. But whatever happened to everyone involved with this shitstorm?
Ion Software became Ion Storm after being bought by Eidos, but they company closed down in 2005. As for Eidos, it was close to closing down itself and sold its company to Square Enix Europe to save its asses, along with the Tomb Raider and Hitman franchises. Todd Porter and Jerry O’Flaherty went on to work on more games, Todd doing… nothing I’m familiar with, and Jerry working on art for games like Gears of War 1. As for John Romero, however, just like a burnt out rock star, he is trying REAL hard to stay in peoples frontal lobes, but failing oh so hard. From being in a mobile phone company to working for Midway during their final years as they were making big mistakes. The recent news of John Romero was that he partnered with old time friend and one of the original four creators of Doom, Adrian Carmack, to work on a new game, with a Kickstarter for $700,000… The kickstarter was cancelled shortly after this. And so, just like a good portion of John Romero’s career, so ends the story of Daikatana: One of the worst games ever made. Also, fun fact, there is a Gameboy Color version of Daikatana that was said to be pretty good, so sleep easy at night knowing it wasn't a total failure.